A huge thanks to Bert Van Brande, Hasmi Ferguson and Conrad Vernon for getting me on board!
The entire team were amazing from beginning to end. Kyle Hunter and Ariel Shaffir were the best showrunners a team could hope for, and we all laughed together EVERY WEEK throughout production!
I had the great pleasure of being the Production Designer on this unique show.
This role included:
• Supervising creative teams at two different studios, and additional outsource artists
• Being responsible for ensuring all stages of production hit a consistent style and quality
• Strategic planning regarding scoping, scheduling and creative solutions
• Involved in the interview, selection and hiring process for creative roles on the project
• Mentoring designers, providing design paintovers, and creating designs myself
• Creating overview colour scripts, and painting individual colour keys
• Providing paintovers for assets, lighting, fx
• Leading client calls and reviews
• Involved with scoping, scheduling and assigning tasks
• Keeping the tone cooperative,collaborative and fun while keeping up with a tight schedule
Every team that comes together on a creative project has it’s own energy and tone. We really hit the jackpot on this one. An amazing group of people came together to make an atmosphere that was really fun despite the challenging nature of the show and schedule. I really never wanted it to end!
Colour scripts and colour keys
These are among my very favourite things to make, and they are really important to get right. The lighting design has a really big impact on the final product hitting eyeballs around the world. I had the great fortune of having Jacquie Doyle to lean on for colour keys. She is amazing, and I recommend looking her up! Michelle McIver also helped out quite a lot, and several other members of the design team poked their heads into colour keys for brief visits too!
The first step is to figure out the overall storytelling arc of each episode, and the season as a whole.
The time of day is important for some episodes for continuity, so the lighting has to work within that. For other episodes there is more freedom to light it in the most impactful way to support the storytelling of the scene.
Here are some examples of the next pass of colour scripts, pulling reference for individual scenes. I’d show a kind of mood board sample of references from the Sauasge Party feature, existing set designs, and even from other films and animated sources we admired. Once we were all on the same page with the overall intent, it would be time to start individual colour keys
Here are two keys I painted for the show. The first is much looser, painted over a greyscale playblast.
The second is painted over a diffuse render of the set. This head start, combined with the importance of the tone in this sequence meant this key ended up much more polished than the one on the left.
Working over renders is ideal, as i't’s going to be a more accurate visualisation of something that the lighting artists can actually match, and both teams did a really great job of this!
The more illustrative tricks you use in the colour key to make an appealing image - painterly brushwork, broken colour, lost edges - the harder it becomes for the lighting team to get a similar look. Especially on a TV schedule.
Here are a few favourite keys I worked on, not in chronological order. Shoutouts to Michelle McIver and Ryley Garcia for initial passes on a couple of these that I took over (due to schedule pressures).
And of course a big thankyou to Jacquie Doyle for being my constant fresh eyes and sanity check on all keys!
To support the release of the show, I created these illustrations of the ‘cast’ doing the talk show rounds :)
Here’s Sammy Bagel Jr appearing on Carpool Karaoke on that super relevant (and definitely still running) talk show ‘The Late Late Show’. Geez what great harmonies!
Here’s Jack with his White Pants on. Everyone’s talking about it!
Here’s Frank himself, regaling the most current talk show host with stories from the set. It definitely aired last night. Did you miss it?